Mousavi, Defiant, Calls for More Rallies
Reformist presidential aspirant Mir Hosain Mousavi called Monday morning for another round of big street protests by his supporters against the attempt of the regime to steal the election for hard liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps has replied by warning it will crush any further street protests with a "revolutionary confrontation."
FT points out that given Mousavi's continued challenge to Khamenei's decisions, the regime may well arrest him, feeling the step is necessary to remove his freedom of action. Of course, Iranian Shiites all know the pitfalls of creating martyrs, since the religion is all about resisting the tyrants in history who made the martyrs. An arrest of Mousavi would either push Iran over the brink or would indeed consolidate power for the time being in the hands of the hard liners.
There were no large rallies on Sunday, which the BBC attributes to the security forces fanning through the streets. But the security forces had fanned through the streets on Saturday, too. More likely, the reformists were regrouping after the violence and clamp down on Saturday, which left up to 13 dead. Those 13, including the unarmed young woman known as Neda Agha Sultan (1983-2009)--whose murder by a Basiji was caught on camer-- need to be mourned. The authorities cancelled memorial service for her at Nilufar Mosque. Likely it will now be held in the streets.
The Guardianship Council has admitted that more votes were counted in 50 cities across Iran than there were voters-- the difference could be as much as 3 million questionable ballots. (See below for why the over all vote tallies are anyway implausible.)
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 6/22/2009 01:00:00 AM
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11 Comments:
Prof. Cole-
At some point, if you get the time, I hope you can do a post discussing the various ethnic groups in Iran, and which way they break in the current crisis. Is there any comparison with prewar Iraq's ethnic situation? If the writ of the central government begins to fail, what will the minorities do?
There had been some buzzing today in a report from NBC about Iran's minorities and their access to arms. Do you have any reaction to it?
I've been puzzled about why Mr. Mousavi, who claims to have adopted a Ghandian philosophy of civil disobedience, is not leading the Tehran marches personally. He appears to be conflicted, torn between using civil disobedience to overturn the election and protecting his life and the lives of his followers.
I don't pretend to understand the Shiite religion, but, if Mr. Mousavi has the support of at least some Iranian clerics, wouldn't a fatwa, proclaiming that death in civil disobedience is the equivalent of death in battle, give him the moral authority to lead his martyrs into the clubs of the Revolutionary Guard and the Basiji?
In the final analysis, it was the moral authority of Indian independence and American Civil Rights that made it possible for Ghandi and King to face down British clubs and Southern police dogs, and to expose unarmed and unresisting demonstrators, even children, to violence and death.
I've just heard the heir-presumptive to the late(unlamented)shah of iran. He supports the protests,as do you. I think both of you are playing a dangerous game.
Does the Iranian Guardian Council regard that in some cities more than 100% of those that are eligible to vote actually vote as exceptional? Doesn't look like it:
Kadkhodaei further explained that the voter turnout of above 100% in some cities is a normal phenomenon because there is no legal limitation for people to vote for the presidential elections in another city or province to which people often travel or commute.
The 3 million "questionable" votes are 3 million pieces of evidence that the voting was rigged. How can anyone explain that away. In normal polls, multiple checks are carried out to ensure that the voting papers go to the rightful candidate. How the hell can they get 3 million wrong?
Moreover, the assumption there is that the 50 cities had 100% turn out, which cannot possibly be right.
If the system can add so many ghosts, what credibility does it have for getting the allocation right?
Haaretz : “I never thought I'd be rooting for Iran” Sometimes it feels to me as if the western media in general, and the internet in particular has become this modern equivalent to the ancient Roman Colosseum. A "place" where we citizens of American Empire "go", drunk on gasoline and made obese to the point of systemic diabetes by our gluttony for sugar-water to reign self-righteously as a rowdy crowd, acting without any moral hazard whatsoever, making "thumbs up!" or "thumbs down!" pronouncements in instant, fantastic, media narrative-driven judgement of Who should live? and Who should die. And with such self-righteous omniscience we, ourselves become that mob of our media's cultural self-projections, often couching any doubts that dare to linger in the soothing, passive tense of subversive Headlines and text crawls posed as harmless rhetorical questions. People who go around setting fires and throwing rocks at police are engaging in confrontation, not protestation; Riot Police responding to rioters is not a brutal suppression of basic human rights. Dissent by the (obviously!) dis-enfranchised people of Iran against the what, nearly ~30 year absolute rule of a theocratic dictator is not some game ~ some Super Sunday "blood sport" or WWF Wednesday "smackdown" on Channel 6. Yet for all intents and purposes all the intricate subtleties of their Life & Death struggle is reduced to base and bloody spectacle for US, sitting here at our flat-screen console seats sur le réseau Colosseum. Click on "OK", citizen. Launch the HellFire from the drone and kill the bad guy with the baton, beating the woman for the crime of being a woman. Don't give it a second thought ~ everyone here on The Colosseum felt the same way about it as you did, that he deserved to die. If you have any lingering doubt about it, think of 'Neda' the martyr! — As Kurt Vonnegut put it to us, bluntly, without the comforting cover of our own self-delusions: “If you die horribly while on television, you will not have died in vain: you will have entertained us.”
Prof. Cole,
I can't say that I'm thrilled with the recent developments. What is interesting to me is that both Mousavi and Rasfanjani have effectively doubled down against Khamenei. If Khamenei stays in power, Mousavi and Rasfanjani are dead men. Both these guys know that, and the fact that they're willing to go all out is impressive. What are the odds that Sistani decides to get involved?
Scenario One:
Ahmadinejad and Khamenei suppress peaceful protests using military force and extrajudicial executions. The IAEA concludes Iran cannot be trusted with nuclear material. All nuclear power plant construction in Iran is halted. The country falls by the wayside.
Scenario Two:
Citing corruption, he Council of Guardians removes Khamenei, a new election is held, a reformist candidtae is elected. The IAEA reaffirms Iranian goals for peaceful nuclear energy. With its sizable professional class and its rich mineral wealth, Iran becomes the new "I" in IBRIC.
at what point do things get bad enough (or the hard-liners lose enough self-control) that we get a Tiananmen Square massacre?
Did the hardliners truly not think through the consequences of their actions? Did they really naively believe that Iranians would just swallow the results and move on?
Or did they make a cynical calculation that they would ride out whatever protests they figured might occur? And if so, did they underestimate the scale of dissatisfaction with their rule?
I'm trying hard to wrap my head around this without giving into simplistic, 'the people will rise up and overcome' sentiments. This is not a regime which is going to be brought down 'merely' by street protests in the way that the eastern European communist governments fell like dominoes with hardly a shot fired. Hopefully Mousavi has something more in the works than just street protests. Is there any hope of peeling off some of the paramilitary units needed to stifle the protests? And would they really open fire on fellow Iranians if ordered to do so?
When I saw the news article on this subject I had to shake my head and just laugh. They admitted that there were anomalies but not as bad as claimed!!!! Duh
Prof. Cole,
Please comment on the issue claimed in comments at Washington Monthly, that voters in Iran don't have to vote in their home district in national elections. Hence, it would be possible for more votes to be tallied at a certain polling center than voters registered in that region?
(There are still many suspicious features of the election anyway.)
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